New from Heinz: Cupcakes that cost $50,000!

I was working with the Syracuse Symphony last week and was able to take a trip to Eastman to meet with Greg Sandow, who is teaching there once a week for seven weeks.  Our talk went all over the map and we shared many ideas.  He suggested I check out the Heinz Endowments and their grants for audience initiatives. It just so happens that the program was also in the news last week.  The news is not good though, not good at all!….

Let me say up front, I am not critical of funding the efforts to try and engage audiences with new initiatives. I am very much into reaching out to the audience,  please check out my Plugging the Holes series if you haven’t yet.  However, most these programs go from the ridiculous to the absurd and replace initiative with incentive.

An article by Timothy McNulty about the program starts out promisingly:

The problem with some arts events is they treat audiences as if they don’t exist at all.

That is the stance of the Heinz Endowments’ “Arts Experience Initiative,” which argues that audiences are desperate to have emotional and personal connections with the arts. Too often, they are instead told to be still and quiet, and the museum or theater or dance troupe they are watching will direct them how to react and feel.

In the same article, some of the initiative programs are listed, and it becomes quite obvious the examples of innovative and  sustainable connections to an audience, are being confused with gimmicks and obvious accessibility, with an impossible price tag attached for it to continue after the grant runs out.  Its no wonder though, when you read in this article published by Carnegie Online and in particular this statement by Lynne Conner, a professor of theater and history at the University of Pittsburgh:

The initiative’s funded projects are trying to get away from the ‘talking head’ kind of thing and much more into the experiential process. But it takes money, time, and the willingness to fail (my emphasis)

In other words, they are expecting these programs to not work!  Plus, each grant is worth $50,000! Here are some highlights:

• Concert messaging at Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. A screen displayed information about music and the PSO between pieces, to reach out to the audience and disrupt the usual concert format.

How is this a connection?

I guess the money is spent on the screen and projector, but how much down time do they think there is in a concert.  I guess you can include pre concert and during intermission, but aside from a minor stage move between the first two works for a soloist, there is little or no down time unless they are including the time between movements?  Here’s an idea, have the conductor or a musician step out during the move and talk to the audience (you know CONNECT) the cost is $O and the connection is live, not on a screen! To me this is just adding another layer between the orchestra and the audience.

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• Girls Night Out at City Theatre. Friday night group specials with drink discounts and massages show that arts events with friends can be fun

Gimmick alert!

Drinks, massages and plays are separate events and every bar discounts, it’s called Happy Hour!  You never hear of a bar putting on live Classical music to make drinking more accessible!  Now group massage, well that could be fun.  I just wonder after having drinks and then getting a massage, how many will actually actually stay awake for the whole play?    For the now defunct New Attitudes Series by the Buffalo Philharmonic (inspired by the now defunct Nerve Endings series by the Oregon Symphony) they had free Martinis lined up waiting for the audience at the end of the concert, but almost no one stayed (or attended for that matter), well except for me and many of the musicians!  We were the only ones disappointed when the series was canceled!

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• Circle discussions at Quantum Theatre. Board members invite subscribers and single-ticket buyers into their homes, forcing board members and other theater officials to listen closely to audience opinions

Please explain how this costs $50,000?

This is not innovation, it is accessibility and common sense, although when the board members are “forced”, are they strapped down in some way?  All kidding aside, aren’t we supposed to listen to our audiences and again HOW DOES THIS COST $50,000???????

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European intermission and Cupcake Questions at Dance Alloy Theatre. During a half-hour intermission the audience gets free cupcakes with questions tucked inside, provoking thought and discussion in fun ways.

Speechless!

Question?  If someone told you that if you watched C-Span for 2 hours you got a free cupcake would you do it?  Why not build a camp fire and offer free s’mores lessons?  I cannot fathom the meeting of the grant committee with someone saying, wow such innovation, free cupcakes with questions inside, let’s send them $50,000 immediately! The biggest problem with this idea is two fold:

1. I guess none of these people have been out in the lobby at intermission, NEWS FLASH people are already talking to each other!
2. By this you are forcing them to talk about what you want them to talk about which is exactly what you were trying not to do!  If the performance is interesting and/or thrilling enough, they will talk about it, a cupcake wont do it.  (Plus you should never talk with food in your mouth)

The company itself already seems to have the right idea with the motto Breaking the 4th Wall referring to the connection to the audience, so enough with the cupcakes!  You already have the right idea, but then again there is that $50,000…..

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The problem here is you cannot force a relationship to happen, and certainly throwing money recklessly like with these ideas to try and connect to an audience brings to mind the immortal Beatles song Can’t Buy Me Love! To be fair, if you read the article there are some worthwhile ideas such as:

Point of View Writing Workshops at Silver Eye Center for Photography. Participants write short stories related to photography to foster opinion sharing and interaction with art.

Still, a personal connection starts with a desire to do have one, not with a desire to get a huge grant.  That is insincere and people will see right through it, and whatever artificial relationship is started, it will ultimately fail as marriages for money mostly do.  The best initiative programs I am involved with or have heard about,  have reasonable costs or cost nothing at all, they have to, or they can’t be sustained.  For these there are no screens, drinks, massages, cupcakes or any gimmicks in sight, only the desire to connect.   Most of the Heinz programs seem to have little to do with wanting a connection, and everything to do with getting a grant.

It’s my belief that initiative is not something that you can pay someone to have, it is something that you already have, something that comes from within.  Plus it should be about the willingness to succeed, not the willingness to fail!

I will write a post in the near future of what I would do if  suddenly a check came to the orchestra for $50,000 to spend on anything we want.

In the 5th and final part of my Plugging the Holes series, I will do a summary budget of what each program has cost us.